Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Midge Ure: Toronto Mike'd Podcast Episode 1514

Episode Date: July 4, 2024

In this 1514th episode of Toronto Mike'd, Mike chats with musician Midge Ure about Ultravox, Vienna, the passing of Chris Cross, Do They Know It's Christmas?, Live Aid, Thin Lizzy, and more. Toronto Mike'd is proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, Ridley Funeral Home, The Advantaged Investor podcast from Raymond James Canada, The Toronto Maple Leafs Baseball Team and RecycleMyElectronics.ca. If you would like to support the show, we do have partner opportunities available. Please email Toronto Mike at [e-mail]

The feeling has gone, only you and I, it means nothing to me This means nothing to me Oh, you're the only one What up, Miami? Welcome to episode 1514 of Toronto Miked! Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a fiercely independent craft brewery who believes in supporting communities, good times, and brewing amazing beer. Order online for free local home delivery in the GTA. Palma Pasta. Enjoy the taste of fresh,

homemade Italian pasta and entrees from Palma Pasta in Mississauga and Oakville. The Toronto Maple Leafs baseball team, the best baseball in the city outside the dome. Join me July 7th at Christie Pitts. The best baseball team. The best baseball in the city, outside the dome. Join me July 7th at Christie Pitts. I'm recording live at 2pm. RecycleMyElectronics.ca. Committing to our planet's future means properly recycling our electronics of the past. And Ridley Funeral Home. Pill pillars of the community since 1921. Today, making his Toronto mic

debut is Midge Yerr. Nice to meet you, what a pleasure. What a pleasure it is that the stuff just happened and worked instantly. There we go, that's the pleasure. Is that not typical? There's usually a few gremlins in the tech? Technology is wonderful when it works, but more times than not it doesn't. So to get straight through like this is quite something. Well hello from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Whereabouts do we find you today, Mitch?

I'm in the Algarve in Portugal. Oh, beautiful. Okay, they must be soccer mad there right now. I was going to ask you, can you root for England or are you a Scotland supporter through and through? That's like me asking you if you're an American. Please. Dear, dear, dear. Yeah, you know what, growing up in Glasgow in Scotland, you had to be very careful about which football team you supported because two main teams in Glasgow and it was to do with religion rather than soccer and so I chose to follow neither. I'll watch Scotland playing England but other than that, I'm not that interested.

My wife is a big football fan. Okay, well Portugal will be mad I suppose this weekend. It's crazy. It's crazy. We could hear, they were obviously, we knew it had gone to penalties because we could hear the screaming and shouting out the streets. So that's slightly hot blooded. Well you can hear it here so we have a very large Portuguese community here in Toronto and it feels like I'm in Portugal sometimes it's madness so it's a lot of fun for people this summer. Yeah it's great it's good there's a lot of passion out there and they really enjoy it, it's

fabulous. I have a hello for you from Cameron Carpenter here in Toronto. He wants me to say hello to you, Midge. At CAM, I know very well. We go way back from the old chrysalis days. We used to hang out together and I'm hoping to see him when I come back over again soon. Amazing. Maybe we all get together. I would love to meet you, my friend. Well, I'm going to be there. I'm there at the Classic Elmo. So, you know, it'd be lovely to meet up. Okay, so that's August 16th. So let's discuss that off the top here because I want to ask you a few questions about previous trips to Toronto. But August 16th of this year, 2024, you're at the Elma Combo. And it's interesting to me because you're at the El Macombo and it's interesting to me because you're gonna be at it's being branded as Susa Palooza

so I'm gonna ask you in a moment about Ed Susa who is coming over here shortly to kick out the jams with me Ed Susa but you're gonna play with a gentleman named Chris Tate who was in who is in Chalk Circle and Chalk Circle was the first band I ever saw live so it's all kind of coming full full Chalk Circle, and Chalk Circle was the first band I ever saw live, so it's all kind of come in full Chalk Circle here. But tell me about August 16th at the Elma Combo, what can we expect? Well, I've done a couple of things in the past for Ed, mainly acoustic solo things, he puts on these fantastic events. And he asked me if I would come over and do something for a celebratory event that he's having, his birthday I think. And who is it weirdly enough? He's Portuguese. Talking about full circles, you know, there we are. So I'm coming over

this time with a thing I called a band in a box, which is something I put together a couple of years ago when my old friend Howard Jones asked me if I would go on tour on part of a package. And, you know, Howard was very successful in both Canada and the States, much more so than I was. And I said, well, I can't really do it with a full-blown band. It's just cost-prohibitive So I devised a band band in a box, which is a keyboard player myself on synths and guitar and vocals and And a little box that enables me to to you know have some loops drums and and synth bass parts and things Enables me to play a lot of tunes that people you know might want to hear which

is good. Well I think a lot of people would love to hear that so I will tell people midyear.com is where you go to buy tickets again it's a Elma Combo which was recently renovated they put a bunch of money into it to get those acoustics perfect again it's a great venue so you're there August 16th and remember it's banned in a box We don't want to confuse that with Corey Hart's boy in a box boy in the box is different than band in a box So people should definitely check that out Now, okay

I wanted to ask you midge about your first few trips to Toronto with ultra box because you played the edge and I'm wondering if you Have any memories of being booked by the Gary's Gary Top and Gary Cormier? Absolutely none but anything beyond about two weeks ago I can't remember. So you know and please don't be offended by any of that I say. The thing is I think I think there's a misconception that people think that artists know exactly what they're doing and where they're going. And that kind of stops, that line is drawn in the sand

when it comes to finishing making your music, doing the graphics, directing the videos or whatever. When it comes to actually booking concerts, you're just glad that you're actually out doing it. So someone else takes care of all the nuts and bolts and crosses the T's and dots the I's and all I have to think about is that I'm on a plane and I'm heading out to Canada and I'm going to have a great time. So that's it, it all stops there. Now the Garys were big fans of yours and Ultravoxes and they would listen to you on CF and Y. Now I'm in the danger zone here because I'm going beyond two weeks here, but any memories

of CF and Y, the spirit of radio here in Toronto who would have played a lot of your music back in the 80s? Back in the early 80s when I first came over to Canada, it was probably 1980, it was the first time I did it, there were a handful of stations in America that would play you. So you had one in the West Coast and one in the East Coast. And then that massive bit in the middle couldn't figure out what you were. You know, it was so alien to them. But Canada was different.

Canada, we were much more alike. We were much more cousins. You know, we shared a sense of humor. We watched the same programs. We watched the same BBC programs. You guys were, you know, up to date with Coronation Street. You saw Top of the Pops. You saw all of this connection that we had.

And music was a big connection. So you were much more open to something that was a bit left field, possibly, you know, for radio. So radio picked us up a lot, plus the fact that our wonderful drummer, Warren Cann, was a Canadian. So we used to get all that extra play that Canadian artists would get. We fell into that category. So when South of the Border, for for you guys wouldn't touch us with a

barge pole, you guys were playing us to death, which is wonderful. Well, CFNY had a mandate where they couldn't play top 40 hits and what they would often do was look at what was percolating in Britain and they would kind of see what was kind of up and coming there. Wasn't a top 40 hit in North America yet and they gave a lot of play to that absolutely so it would make sense that you would be played on CF and why back in the in the 1980s yeah and we were we were very grateful for it absolutely so it was it was funny when we used to come in to her because we could have a crowd in Canada we always pulled the crowd it was funny when we used to come and tour because we could have a crowd in Canada.

We always pulled a crowd. It was never quite guaranteed what we would pull when we went south of the border. Too funny. Now, actually, I'm watching a documentary. This was just last night. I started it and it's called the Bratz and it's all about the Brat Pack.

You remember, of course, the Brat Pack in the 80s, that group of actors. And a lot of the Brat Pat in the 80s, that group of actors. And a lot of the movies they were in were John Hughes films and they were talking about how a great deal of young Americans discovered like new wave music and synthesizer music because they would hear it in a John Hughes movie because John himself was such a big fan of that music

that he would put it in his movies. It's kind of interesting to think of the John Hughes movies like Pretty in Pink or Breakfast Club as sort of a gateway to synthesizer new wave music. Yeah, it certainly helped Simple Minds. You know, that broke the bat. He obviously wasn't much of an Ultravox fan because I don't remember ever hearing anything about any of his movies. That. That's his lost midge for sure here. Now to put a loop on your Toronto now, not that you can remember, but you played the Copa, you played Massey Hall, you played the Phoenix, you played Hughes Room. Do you have a favorite memory of playing in the City of Toronto? Many. Hughes was a great place. I mean I

didn't play there until maybe, see I'm gonna say it's beyond two weeks ago but I'm gonna say 10, 15 years ago because it was one of the few places you could just turn up your acoustic guitar and wander on stage and do your thing. You know, walks and all, nothing to hide behind. You know, people were sitting in tables, sitting at seats right in front of you, looking up your nose. You really had to be comfortable doing what you were doing. And it was a great place. I'm not sure it still exists. I know it was... They moved it.

...threatened to close. Yeah. Is it still there? It's relocated, but the Hughes room... Oh, right. Okay. Because Jane Harbury, who does PR there, was recently on my show, and it's got a new location, but it still exists. Oh, good. Right. Great. That was a great place. And the Phoenix, I believe, is closing down. does PR there was recently on my show and it's got a new location but it still exists.

Oh good, right, good. That was a great place and the Phoenix I believe is closing down. Yes, 410 Sherbourne Street, the Phoenix, I know you played there, it is shutting down. They're trying to find a new location but no news yet but it's kind of sad for me anyways to see these concert venues from yesteryear close up shop. It's very sad. Well again the places like this they should have documentaries done about them because the walls you know walls could speak you know they would tell amazing stories you know they've seen artists you know coming through and cutting their teeth for decades now and it's really sad to see these places closed down. Massey Hall was obviously a big one because it was a fantastic place to play. It was a kind of feather in an ultra box's cap, you know,

to come in and play somewhere the stature of that. So yeah, fun memories of it all. Amazing. Just to change the channel here for a moment, because I got a lovely note. I wanted to share it with you. It came from Professor James Fraser, and Professor James Fraser writes, and Professor James Fraser writes, Midge received his honorary doctorate from the University of Edinburgh at the same ceremony where my wife was posthumously awarded her PhD. He was immensely kind to my in-laws and made a huge impression that has stayed with us all. So I just wanted to share that with you, nice words.

That's lovely. I mean, that's a really nice thing to hear. I always get nervous when people say you don't remember meeting me I met you X amount of years ago and then I'm waiting for you know, the real put down and you were an absolute dick But but that's something like that is a wonderful thing to hear. I'm very touched right? What's the opposite of a dick? That's what you were apparently. So I'm dickless. Now I'm thinking of Ghostbusters. Yeah, the man has no dick. Okay, so now growing back, growing up in Scotland, just curious if you wouldn't mind sharing a story, you've probably been asked a million times, but do you remember when you realized that you wanted to be a musician? Do

you remember when that feeling overcame you? I think without even realizing it, you know, radio played a big part in my background. I lived in a tenement slum in the outskirts of Glasgow and we had a radio, but the radio was a conduit to what was going on outside. It was a little ray of light in a very dark, grey world. So I found I could sing. I had a natural ability to just pick up a tune and remember, much more so than I do now. I can't remember my own songs, never mind someone else's.

But back then, it was like a sponge. And then I think that was combined with going to the Saturday morning cinema, kids cinema, and seeing Britain's answer to Elvis Presley, a guy called Tommy Steele, in a movie. And he had a guitar and all the girls loved him. And I thought, oh, that could be quite interesting. It'd be fun. So I could draw a guitar long before I ever owned one.

So the ability to sing and the passion for trying to teach myself a guitar. When does Jim become Midge? I was 18 doing the sensible thing. My father was a van driver and he said to my brother and I become mechanics or engineers or you know have a skill, have a trade and you will you will do better than I've done and you'll have a house and you'll have a family and a good lifestyle. A job for life I suppose which doesn't really exist anymore and playing in bands at weekends and I went with the keyboard player we had in the band I was in who we didn't like very much who was going to audition for a much bigger band in Scotland. So I went with him to make sure he got the job and while they were

auditioning him they asked me to play guitar for their bands while he played keys and the obvious happened they offered me the job as guitarist and he didn't get the job as keyboard player. So I had to go home and say to my parents like this ridiculous opportunities's popped up. If you want me to finish the apprenticeship, I will. Another two and a half years to go. But the day I finish, I'll never go back. And my father's face dropped and my mother said, follow your heart. Was it the best advice I've ever had? So I did.

And when I joined that band, run by two Scottish brothers, the McGinleys, Jim and Kevin McGinley, Jim said, well, you're James, you're Jim as well, so we can't have two Jims, so you're now Midge, which is, he just flipped the name back, which is M-I-J. Which is a fun fact, and I don't think I realized it until very recently that the word midge is just the sound. I have a son, my oldest son is named James. I call him Jimbo all the time, but you take Jim and you reverse these sounds and it's midge. Midge, absolutely, yeah. So like all of these things, no one asks for a name like that. Well, you gave it to yourself. Now, what was the name of that band with the Scottish brothers? It was called Salvation at the time. The singer left after a couple of years. We went to see a Dirty Honey movie, came out the cinema and we went off and had a haircut like James Dean, like Clint Eastwood in that movie.

And we changed our name to Slick. S-L-I-K. We dropped the C. And found ourselves with a number one record, kind of competing with the Bay City Rollers. And then you knew you had made it, right? No, in Fairy Tail Land, yes, you would think this is really, this is amazing, you get the phone call letting you know that the record that you weren't allowed to play on, or hadn't written or hadn't produced or anything was currently number one and

you should have been ecstatic and I wasn't because it wasn't mine and that was it. I kind of pulled the plug on that record deal and hoped that we'd be re-signed which we weren't. Very interesting. Okay, so, cause I have a question about Visage. Visage, yeah. Yeah, well, Basement Dweller wants to know, he's a listener to the program. I saw him last Thursday, hello Basement Dweller. Whose idea was it to cover Zagran Evans in the year 2525?

Well, when I thought I was washed up up in Glasgow after the demise of Slick, I got a phone call from Glenn Matlock, ex bass player of the Sex Pistols, who had formed a new band and a music journalist had said to him, you know, you check out that kid from Slick, you know, he's the guy that you should have in your band and he called me up weirdly and invited me down to London, came to London, joined the rich kids. You know, the album was produced by, you know,

Mick Ronson, the great Mick Ronson. And I, in 1978, I killed it all by buying a synthesizer and trying to bring it into the band. So a band with rock instrumentation and this instrument that was, you know, amazing, we could do amazing things with. It killed the band. Half the band hated it, half the band loved it. Half of the band who loved it, myself

and the drummer, Rusty Egan, took some of the time that was allotted to us, demo studio time, allotted to us. And I went into the studio and I said, well, let's do a cover of this song 2525 and we can do a kind of electronic thing and and we did that as a as a demo basically and then the idea grew from that to wouldn't it be great to incorporate all our favorite musicians into this Visage studio project and one of those musicians was Billy Currie, keyboard

player with ultra box. Is this around the period so I read that you were asked to join the Sex Pistols. That was that was when I was in slick just prior to slick having that number one record. I was stopped in the streets of Glasgow by a guy called Bernie Rhodes who I didn't know but he went on to manage the clash and his friend was sitting in a car around the corner and that was Malcolm of a guy called Bernie Rhodes, who I didn't know, but he went on to manage the Clash. And his friend was sitting in the car around the corner, and that was Malcolm McLaren. And yeah, no, very bizarre.

And yeah, well, I thought they were stopping me because in Glasgow at the time, I was quite a well-known musician in my own little circle. And bands who would come to play the Glasgow Apollo which was the big venue there, if they turned up and their amplifiers weren't working or the guitar was broken or whatever, they couldn't just call up a rental company and they'd come and drop one off. They didn't exist but they'd say go and see if Midge is round at the music shop round the corner because he's always hanging about there. He'll lend you a

guitar or an amp or something. And I thought because this guy was English, that's what it was all about. So I'm talking to Malcolm McLaren who tells me about Vivian Westwood and the New York Dolls and all the stuff that he'd done. And he said, I'm putting a band together. Would you like to join?

And I thought, well, you haven't asked me what I do. Or even if I'm a musician you know what what do you know why would I join a band that you don't even know what I do so it was obviously not important to him the music side of things I think he wanted he wanted a band that would wear Vivian's clothes. No absolutely it sounds sort of like how they put together a band like NSYNC or something or Backstreet Boys right where you basically you're auditioning like The look you look you're you were you were more interested in the style than how talented this person is you're just putting together a band

I think that's precisely what it was and the reason they were in Glasgow was that they had driven from London with some slightly hot music equipment in the boot and in the back of the car. And they'd driven to every major city on the way up to Glasgow. And they were trying to sell off this hot equipment. So I didn't join the Pistols, but I bought an amp. You made some wise sage decisions along the way. I think this was one of them.

That was a good career move, I think. I bought the amp, didn't join the Pistols. Oh, wow. To hear that Sex Pistols origin story is kind of mind-blowing. Because you think, you know, punk, when you think punk, you think the opposite of that, right? Like, this is organic Buds meat at a concert or something. And hey, I don't know how to play a guitar, but I'm going to get my hands on one,

and I'm going to figure this out, and we're going to make music. But you think DIY. This is the opposite of DIY well in a way I mean he was a manipulator Malcolm but he manipulated the right people and he made a brilliant band sure you know yeah they had everything they had the melody the songs the sneer you know the attitude it was absolutely perfect so he was doing something right but it's not how you organically you'd think, not like the clash. It's not like that, it wasn't an organic thing where they played in pubs

and you know, worked their way up. It was kind of, you know, glued together. Right. I want to offer you, Midge, my sincere condolences on the loss of Chris Cross. Would you mind maybe for a moment telling us a little bit about Chris Cross? Chris was one of the founding members of Ultravox. While I was doing Slick and the Rich Kids and Visage, he was still working with Ultravox from day one. And he was a great character. He taught me an awful lot. When I joined the band, when Ultravox came back

from an American Canadian tour, a broken band, they came back without the singer, without the guitar player, they'd just been dropped by the record label. They'd had three albums out, they owed a lot of money. There was nothing there at all. And this is the band that I got excited about joining because they were doing what I wanted to do. I had my synthesizer that broke the band up, you know, and looking for a home and this was the home to join. And Chris had been dabbling with synthesizers for quite a while. You know, they worked with Brian Eno, they worked with the famous Connie Plank, the German

electronic record producer, and Chris taught me about photography and we directed videos together and he taught me about artwork. And in fact it was him who introduced Peter Saville the great album sleeve designer who had done Joy Division and whatever to to UltraVox so he opened a world to me that I didn't really know existed outside of music but totally inspired by music and he was my great friend in the band you know they all they're all good friends but Chris and I were just the buddies. We hung out together, we traveled together,

we'd stay on at the end of a tour instead of going back home for two weeks before flying off to Japan. We'd hang about somewhere for a couple of weeks and rent motorbikes and then go to Japan. So it was a brother, it was very much the glue that held the band together, really. Again, sorry for your loss. You and Chris co-wrote Vienna together.

Well, we all wrote Vienna. There was something, when I joined the band, we said, right, whatever happens in a kind of Lenin-McCartney-esque way, whoever writes what, we will split it equally, because it's a massive bone of contention for artists. When you're starting out, it doesn't seem to make much sense until you find out that the songwriter is generating 10 times more money than you are.

And that causes a little bit of disruption. Money raises its ugly head again, and it's a major fighting point. So something like Vienna, if you listen to it and break it down to its component parts, its equal parts are equally important in that song. It wouldn't be that song without the drum beat that Warren came up with or the syn drum, you know all of those things. It wouldn't be the Vienna without that synth bass. It wouldn't be Vienna without that synth bass, it wouldn't be Vienna without Billy's or my lyrics and vocals. So it's very much a sample of what a band is like when they're

working together in unison. The feeling has gone, only you and I, it means nothing to me This means nothing to me Oh, you're the only one The music is weaving Planting nuts with cicatose streams, the rhythm is calling Alone in the night as the daylight rings, a cool empty silence The warmth of your hand in a cold grey sky It faints to the distance The image has gone on and you are dying, it means nothing to me This means nothing to me Love me enough Oh I'm gonna be a man, I'm gonna be a star

I'm gonna be a star, I'm gonna be a star I'm gonna be a star, I'm gonna be a star I'm gonna be a star, I'm gonna be a star I'm gonna be a star, I'm gonna be a star This means nothing to me This means nothing to me I'm the end John Hughes made a big mistake by not putting Vienna in one of his films. I'll just say right now, Vienna, what a classic. I still love hearing it and I was reading some of it.

You mentioned Chrysalis earlier when I shouted out Cam Carpenter, but they didn't want to classic. I still love hearing it and I was reading somewhere, you mentioned Chrysalis earlier when I shouted out Kam Carpenter, but they didn't want to release it as a single. There's a story there, they thought it was too slow, too long. To everything, yes. It was the antithesis of what would get played on the radio at the time. The radio had just, think about it, just come out of the new wave punk explosion where every song was under three minutes long. You know, so it wasn't a problem, you didn't have to edit those. But we came out with this four and a half minute opus, you know, this Bohemian Rhapsody of its day and they kept saying you have to

edit it, we see the reaction it gets. It's just an album track, every time you play it the place erupts and it's. You could hear a pin drop at the beginning and then it's this roar at the end. Eventually we said, get the same people who edited Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights or The Beatles' Hey Jude. And they said, well, it wasn't. And we said, yeah, that's what I mean. And luckily someone picked it up in late night radio and started playing it and it went from there. Totally organic. Do you have any memory of who and where? Like, I've heard this story.

These stories are sort of gone now because DJs don't have this ability to pick something up and play it anymore. Everything is all automated and pre-programmed by somebody much higher in the chain and maybe it's the same in every market. It's a whole different rant I have here, Midge. But do you remember at all, like which station, which DJs?

I don't remember which station or DJ. It was a Manchester-based station and it was one of the record plug-ers for Chrysalis when he was doing his late night rounds and he was dropping records off at discos and raves or whatever, whatever they were called back then, they weren't called raves, but discos, dances, DJ clubs, things and as he's driving back late at night he heard the same DJ play the same song almost every night around the same time and he got in touch with the rest of Chris Liston said something happening here, somebody's got this, You know, the very organic way that things used to happen. And then it just kind of moved on from there.

I played Vienna for my 20 year old daughter and she said that Vienna is a vibe. Only a 20 year old could say that and get away with it. I think it was a good thing though, Midge. I think that she meant this in a compliment. I think it was a good thing though, Midge. I think she meant this compliment. I have to look up my youth glossary. Things are vibes now. I know it's like, oh things are vibes now. Okay. I get it. You just feel it. Okay. Fun fact for the listenership that Vienna was voted the, uh, Britain's favorite single that peaked at number two on the charts.

This was a 2012 poll by BBC radio too. So, Britain's all-time favourite single that never made it to number one. So there you go. Yep, yeah, we sat at number two for quite a long time and it's funny because you know one of the songs, two different songs, kept us off the number one spot. John Lennon had just been murdered so you know one of his tracks went straight to number one quite rightly so and the other was a comedy song reputedly and and the only the great British record buying public would buy something like this and it kept Vien off the number one spot and the world was incensed but not ultra box because we had we had got this thing that would never have been played on the radio,

unless huge amounts of luck had intervened. And we were at number two, which changed everything for us. I mean, everything. All of a sudden, asking the record label if you could make a video, or playing in larger venues, or expanding the equipment equipment or whatever it was. There's a seismic change at that moment. So we weren't miffed at all. Everyone else was on our behalf.

And I mean in August at the El Macombo, you'll play Vienna, right? You can't not play Vienna. The crowd would riot. I think, oh yeah, no, I'm going to, of course. I don't get why artists, I know they're trying to be cool and they're trying to be edgy. You know, they turn up in front of a crowd who paid very good money to come and see you and they refuse to play any of their hits

or they play the obscure album that nobody's ever heard that everyone hated or they turn their back to the audience. They do whatever it is to alienate people. And I think that's just not on. If I went to see one of my favorite artists, I'd expect to hear something that, you know, had a passing resemblance to something that I knew. Yes, change the arrangements, yes, do whatever,

do different solos, do whatever it happens to be, but I want to hear that song. That's why I bought the ticket. Plus you have to remember that if you're in a seated venue, which Neil McCombs wasn to remember that if you're in a seated venue, which Neil McConn wasn't, but if you're in a seated venue, you've got tickets. Half the audience aren't there to see you. They've only gone with a significant other half,

you know, to keep them happy. And they don't know anything you've done. They only know, they only know Vienna, you know, or if I was, or Dancing with Tears, or whatever it is, whatever's been played on the radio. They're not interested in the interesting 15 minute guitar solo on the back of some dodgy B-side or whatever. So you have to cut the cloth to soup where

you are satisfied as an artist, you are satisfying the audience to get to hear what they expect to hear, as well as deeper cuts that they get to hear what they expect to hear as well as deeper cuts that they they hope to hear. Now I'm only gonna bug you about one more ultra-vox song here because you don't have unlimited time mid your busy man I could talk to you for hours but would you mind sharing just some insight some you know inside information about dancing with tears in my eyes? I saw a movie, I was ill, something when I was a kid and either the movie was on in the afternoon

on television, I'm lying on sofa and there's a movie, or it was a Sunday afternoon when I wasn't at school and this movie on the beach came on. Black and white movie set in the 50s, maybe made in the 50s maybe, and it was about a nuclear Holocaust. And the only people left alive on the planet were living in Australia because this, you know, after-war mess had gone on and these people in a submarine who had missed it. So they were heading for Australia and people in the movie, you got to know the characters, chose how they would die.

And it's a very morbid, sad story. And I eventually read the book, it's a Neville shoot, fantastic book. And it just got me, I thought, well, if you know that it's coming, how would you choose to spend your last moments on this earth if you had four minutes? If you had four minutes, what would you choose to, you know, spend your last moments on this earth if you had four minutes? If you had four minutes, what would you do? You would be with the ones you love,

you would put on your favorite piece of music, and you would dance with tears in your eyes, because you can't hide, you can't run, you know. And that poignant imagery, kind of the whole song, came out of that. Plus, I suppose, if you know David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust album, Five Years, there's a song on there that was just so poignant and sad about, you know, hearing on the radio you've only got a certain amount of time left and being helpless about it. So again, it kind of came from a combination of things. Dancing with tears in my eyes Living out of memory of a love that died It's fine, and I'm driving home again

And I'm driving home again It's hard to believe that it's my last time The man on the wildest cries again It's over, it's over Imagine who it dreams in my eyes Living for the memory of the life gone by Fencing with dreams in my eyes Living out of memory of the love that died We drink to forget the coming storm We love to the sound of our favorite song

We drink to forget the coming storm We love to the sound of our favorite song Over and over Dancing with tears in my eyes Waiting for the memory of a life gone by Dancing with tears in mighty eyes Living out a memory of a love that died It's time, and we'll break each other's arms It's time, but I don't think we're breaking I'm never gonna be alone Dancing with tears in my eyes

Waiting for the memory Of a life gone by Dancing With tears in my eyes Living out of memory Of a love that died Dancing With tears in my eyes We've been told the memory of a night you don't lie

Dancing with tears in my eyes I hear your voice Well, you mentioned David Bowie, so I want to ask you just briefly about The Man Who Sold the World. And I'm just, because your cover is so, it's so beautiful. I love your cover of The Man Who Sold the World, and I'm just, because your cover is so, it's so beautiful. I love your cover of The Man Who Sold the World, but when Nirvana covered it for the Unplugged album, I think a whole whack of people, particularly from my generation and maybe a little younger, discovered the song for the first time. So I'm wondering, like, has the interest in your cover been elevated since Unplugged introduced it to a new audience and I

guess that was like 30 years is that possible as I math right 30 years ago now I did the cover version back in 191 or 82 for a UK movie or kind of you know a pound shop you know Porky's movie it was it was dreadful but they wanted to do the one to Parky's is a Toronto film, by the way. I'm just going to throw it out there. That's a Toronto film. Porky's. What was? Porky's, yeah. Right. Well, the other thing, this party party it was called, is way inferior. So they were doing

this and they wanted the soundtrack to be contemporary artists doing cover versions of favourite songs. And before I had a studio, they stuck me in a studio for a day and I did my version of Man of Soul the World. And then 10, 12 years ago, a guy called Hideo Kojima came to see Ultravox. He was a massive Ultravox fan. And him and his entourage turned up.

And I was told this is the guy who designs games, video games, he designed you know Metal Gear Solid and he wants to come and talk to you and he came in and he met us backstage at the Hammersmith Odeon in London and through his interpreter said he's a big fan, he was a dreamer, he was a fantasist and our music used to put pictures in his head and he wanted to be a director and he said the final episode of Metal Gear Solid I want to use your version of Man of Soul the World as the entire opening sequence and of course you hear things like that a lot and I just said okay

yeah fine that's yeah okay never expecting to hear anything from him again. Turns out Hideo Kojima is a genius and hailed as a game designing god. And an entire generation of people discovered this song, thinking it was mine. And then once they fell in love with this thing they looked up the internet to find out what a mid-year was and discovered a wealth of material they didn't know existed so yes it was interesting it was a it was a something I didn't expect well it's very interesting to me because I must admit I'm not much of a gamer here I play I play soccer with my kid on the the

switch ups but but essentially I don't know Metal Gear and I didn't even know this story, but it sounds like Metal Gear is bringing the man who sold the world your version anyways to the masses. And I'm a guy who didn't really know your version or David Bowie's original until Nirvana put it on the unplugged, but it seems like there's multiple channels now bringing this wonderful song to the world so more and renewed interest in your cover. Yeah absolutely yes I mean I thought as I said I recorded it back in the early 80s and I didn't expect to ever hear it again so to have this this to an entirely different generation through a medium that I didn't that

didn't exist when I you exist when I recorded the version. He said that it was his friend Which came as some surprise I spoke into his eyes I thought you'd die alone For a long, long time Oh no, not me I never lost control Your face, to a place With the man who sold the world I laughed and shook his hand And made my way back home First before the land For years and years I roamed I gazed, I gazed, we stared At all the millions

Here we must have died alone A long long time ago Who knows? Not me We never lost control Your face Two-faced With the man who sold the world

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little bit of a little bit of a Mind-blowing. Okay, so you've been fantastic, Midge. I won't take up too much more of your time, but now that you said the 80s, I just need to get a story that you've probably told so many times you're shaking your fist at me right now. But on this program, Toronto Mic, we have done very deep dives into a charity single that Canadian artists put together called Tears Are Not Enough. The story, of course course is that David Foster produces tears are not enough because Quincy Jones did we are the world. Quincy Jones produced we are the world because of do they know it's Christmas. Christmas is that song which we hear you know every December maybe 45 times a

day. We just find but and that's another story, but everybody knows about Bob Geldof from Boomtown Rats and I feel your role in this story is not as well known and I'm wondering, can you please share the story of, I don't know if it's a phone call from Bob to you, but your involvement in Do They Know It's Christmas? Yeah, it was a phone call. I mean, I'd known Bob for a few years at that point. I joined Ultravox, so I was in Newcastle in the north of England doing one of the few live music shows that you could perform live on. And it was co-hosted by Bob's girlfriend at the time, Paula Yates, who eventually became his wife.

And I'm chatting to Paula and she hands me the phone and said, it's Bob, he wants to talk to you. And he had just seen the initial footage on the BBC News, 6 o'clock that night. I was about to go on stage and do the live programme, and he told me what he'd seen and he said he wanted to do something, but the Boomtown Rats were kind of finished, they didn't have the power to pull this off themselves. Could we meet up? And I was going to say no because I hadn't seen the footage and I was really busy and you know, and me to think about, you know. So I, a couple of days later I met up with him in London when I got back and we came to the

fairly obvious conclusion we're useless at everything except maybe putting a song together. If we thought based on the royalty rate that an artist would get at the time from a label, if we managed to write and produce and get a number one record over Christmas and New Year and January, the charts freeze so you can sell a huge amount of records over that period. So it was a very cold and calculated thing we were trying to do. We couldn't just cover a standard Christmas song because 50% of the money generated from a record sale goes to the writers. So we had to write something and donate the songwriting royalties.

So we thought we could maybe generate a hundred thousand pounds, you know, a hundred and fifty thousand dollars or whatever. And I went home from the meeting, picked up a little toy keyboard, came up with a da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da thing. Bob turned up the next day with a guitar with hardly any strings on it and played it upside down because he's left handed and every time he sang it, it was different. I just sent him away, I recorded it on a cassette and said, look, I'll go into my studio, I just built my first studio and I'll try and glue these things together and come up with a track. So I spent four days in my studio playing all the instruments on the record that you hear. So I did that. Bob bludgeoned all of our contemporaries,

all our mates into coming along and doing this. By which point they'd all seen the footage. Everyone knew what was going on. Everyone knew why we were doing this. And Trevor Horn, who Bob originally wanted to produce the record, that Trevor's notoriously slow, it would never have been done in time for Christmas, gave us 24 hours in his studio. And that's the 24 hours you see in the kind of making of the Band-Aid video, where Bob

and I are standing outside an empty studio on a cold Sunday morning and haven't got a clue who's coming. Because we'd only spoken to the artists. We'd never spoken to an adult. So they all turned up. And what you saw in that 24 hours were to do all the vocals for a song they'd never heard. You can't just email it because email didn't exist. You know, they turned up cold not having heard a note.

They've got cameras and microphones in their faces. They're in front of all the contemporary artists, all their rivals, all their friends, whatever. They're all hung over. They're all croaky, you know. So they start singing this thing. I had to do all the individual vocals, Phil Collins drums and the chorus vocals and mix the record to have it finished to be in the pressing plants in time for eight o'clock the next morning. Wow, wow you pulled it off. I mean this was at the time it was the biggest selling single in England in British history up to that point. Yeah, yeah it was quite a thing to pull. I mean you know we

didn't see it as that at the time you know. We were still aiming for a hundred thousand pounds but at this point it was a three ring build. I mean, you know, we didn't see it as that at the time, you know. We were still, we were still aiming for a hundred thousand pounds, but at this point it was a three ring circus. It was, it was going to be massive. No, I mean, so one question I do have is, was there a British musician that you, and maybe this was Bob's department, but highly sought to participate in this recording who couldn't make it or didn't get there and I know in the the we are the world doc which is Become popular in the past year. It's on Netflix I think but the you know you they wanted Prince and they had a verse for Prince and Prince was in town and where's Prince and He never did show up and he was like the guy they really wanted and didn't show up Was there a Prince equivalent in do they know it's Christmas that didn't show up? No, not really. We weren't precious. We didn't pick names. I mean, it would have been great having Bowie there.

That would have been fantastic. But we got him later and used his power. You've got to think about it from our point of view. We were trying to raise as much money as we possibly could. So we wanted not just the artists, we wanted their following. If they were appearing on the record, their fans would have gotten by the record. So we were being quite managerial about it. So we were taking anybody who turned up, you know, and in the nicest possible way. That's kind of what we did. You turn up, you're in there, your fan base will go out and buy this record. That helps. Do you have any idea approximately how much funds you raised to alleviate the brutal Ethiopian

famine? Well I think initially, I think the record at the time was around £7 or £8 million I think, something like that. But because it's a record, and this is the stupid part, we were only thinking of that year, of that Christmas 1984. If you make a Christmas record there's a very good chance it's going to get played every Christmas as you just said. Because every Christmas, every time it gets played, there's a royalty goes to the songwriters. Bob and I gave the songwriting royalties to the Band Aid Trust forever. So it went bigger than we ever thought it would be. So to date, including maybe Live 8 and Live Aid and all of those things that happened afterwards,

it's heading up towards the $200 million mark, something like that. Unbel- good for you. And again, Spawns, We Are The World, which then of course my favorite, Tears Are Not Enough by The Northern Lights. I love that. Love it so much.

Okay, and anybody who wants to hear more, there is a 2.5 hour Toronto Mic'd episode where we just dive deep into tears are not enough. But now you mentioned Live Aid, so just really briefly here before we say goodbye to all this. So basically the success of the single, you're like, we need to do something bigger

and you and Bob talk about this you know, this Live Aid. And for the kids who don't know what Live Aid is, this is happening in London and Philadelphia. It's a 16 hour super concert. And I mean, I think Phil Collins played both, as I recall, in Concord. He was being greedy, yeah. But tell it like, so it's just, hey,

let's do something big. And well, there's not much bigger than Live Aid. It was incredible. I watched that in 1985. It wasn't it wasn't a decision like that. You know, we put together the Band Aid Trust, a body of people who would help us oversee the spending of this money. This wasn't our money. You know, there's millions of pounds coming through from the sale of this record. And we had to surround ourselves by people who knew what they were doing, you know, not

a couple of dodgy singers. So part of the daily onslaught of doing this, right, Band Aid never had an office or a secretary or a mobile phone or anything. We borrowed everything. We took everybody else's and used their stuff. So there were no overheads involved in any of this. We were very Scottish in that respect. We're a bit tight about it.

So three months into dealing with sending out sorghum and high protein biscuits and medication and whatever, there was a trucking cartel in Ethiopia that all the aid agencies, all the standard major aid agencies would use to get their goods up country. And we wanted to break the cartel, but we didn't have the money to do it.

So Bob came in one day and said, I've got this idea, we're gonna do a thing called Live Aid. And at the time it was getting one in London and one in New York it was going to be, it ended up being Philly, as you quite rightly pointed out. And that was a reminder that this was still going on. The famine hadn't changed.

The situation was still rife. It was bad. It was a war-torn country. It was a communist country. It was just an absolute mess. And we thought, well, in order to buy a fleet of trucks to break this cartel, which would allow all the other aid agencies to use our trucking system for free and the money they

would normally spend on the cartel to get the goods up country, they could pump back into the system. Kind of simple, except we didn't have the money to do it. And this was a way of trying to raise the money. Incredible. And of course, you with Ultravox, you played Live Aid at Wembley Stadium. 72,000 people in attendance. What was that like? Scary. No soundcheck. Ultravox at the time, because we refused to use backing tracks or pre-programmed sequences or whatever, we played everything manually.

So in order to do that, we were touring with something like 22, 23 keyboards on stage. So we had to choose very carefully which songs we could get away with performing with the least equipment. But even with the least equipment, it was so volatile and so dodgy that you had to do a five hour sound check. And of course there were no sound checks at Live Aid. You did a line check the day before to make sure your equipment was actually going through to the desk and going to be broadcast.

Then it all got stripped down for the next band to try. So it all had to be reassembled on the day and when you walked out, when you hit your keyboard and you hit your guitar, you prayed that somebody plugged the right cable into the right hole. Right. And you pulled it off. Yes, we did. We were very lucky.

It was phenomenal. It all worked out. Again, August 16th at the El Macombo here in Toronto, Susa Palooza is what they're calling it, but it is of course, it is mid-year and it is Chalk Circles, Chris Tate, and 416, I gotta learn more about 416, they sound good. Ed Susa's bringing you to town. This guy knows how to celebrate.

I thought I celebrated, I had my milestone birthday last Thursday and I had an event for listeners of the podcast and we had free Palma pasta lasagna and penne and we had free beer from Great of the podcast and we had free Palma pasta lasagna and penne and we had free beer from Great Lakes Brewing and it was amazing. But Ed Souza... That was my invite. You didn't get it?

I'm sure. Come on. Oh my God. Can you imagine? Lost the question in the Portuguese Post. Ed Souza was a bit of a jealous. So he's like, no, I want midges coming to town for my bash here, Susa Palooza. So I urge people again to go to midgear.com, M-I-D-G-E-U-R-E.com, buy tickets now. This

is the band in a box, as we learned about earlier. Now I know, I think I promised I would, I think I've taken my time, but I have like a super fan named Avery who sent in a few questions. Could we do rapid fire on our way out? Do you have time for like? Yeah, absolutely. Oh, you're amazing. OK, so this is for you, Avery. I'll just go one by one.

I'm going to read them verbatim here. What was it like joining the live lineup of Thin Lizzy on such short notice following Gary Moore's abrupt departure? I was in the studio putting the finishing touches to Visage's fade to grey. on such short notice following Gary Moore's abrupt departure. I was in the studio putting the finishing touches to Visage's Fade to Grey. I had just joined Ultravox, although no one was interested, and I got a phone call from Philip Lynott, singer, bass player with Thin Lizzy, saying, we're on tour with Journey in America,

Gary's not in the band anymore, we've got another three weeks to go, can you fly out tomorrow to America and finish the tour for us? So I thought, great, I'll learn the songs on the way over. They sent me a cassettes, and this is 1979. They'd sent me cassettes and a set list and a plane ticket. And I had two or three hours getting home from the studio, packed my case, car picked me up, took me to the airport,

got my ghetto blast, I got my big headphones, ready to learn all the songs, and they flew me over in Concord. So I was halfway through the second song, and we landed. So I turned up in New Orleans a few hours later, completely unprepared, and within 24 hours of getting there, first time ever in the States, I was on stage in front of 30,000 people giving it the boys are back in town.

So it was great fun. Wow. Okay. Any thoughts behind your cover of Tom Rush's No Regrets and the brilliant collaboration with the late great Mick Karn on After a Fashion? Such a great video as well. Yeah. After A Fashion. Such a great video as well. Yeah, I much miss Mick Karn from the band Japan. Brilliant musician, brilliant artist, brilliant friend.

Sadly no longer with us. Yeah, we worked together on After A Fashion. We wanted to make a video out in Egypt, which we managed to do. It was great fun, hacking around the Sahara. It was all lovely. And No Regrets, when I was on top of the pops with my first band, with that song that I had very little to do with, the Walker Brothers had done a cover version of No Regrets, the Tom Rush song.

And it was in the charts at the time. And I vowed there and then that I would never allow myself to be manipulated the way I had been, and that one day I would do a song like No Regrets. So I did. Amazing. The Gift is such an amazing album. What was the inspiration behind the very powerful If I Was, my favorite song from your solo career? If I Was was co-written with some friends of mine in Glasgow and I just built my first studio, the one that we did the Band-Aid thing in, and I was still figuring out how it worked. And I pulled that song out as an experiment and thought, okay, I'll start layering up one track at a time,

playing all this, you know, doing my thing and see if I could figure out how it works. So it was like a trial, like a demo thing and the song I have to say is more their creative input than mine. I was still trying to get my head around the nuts and bolts of how to drive the desk and how to get it so it didn't distort. So it was a collaboration on that. What was it like working with George Martin on the Quartet album and when he later provided that amazing arrangement and conducted the orchestra for All in One Day off of the underrated

U-Vox album? Sir George Martin was everything you would hope he would be. George was best known for producing the Beatles, introducing them to orchestras and string quartets and expanding and giving them the tools they needed to create the amazing stuff they did. And when after working with, Ultravox working with Connie Plank, the famous German electronic record producer, and we wanted a change. And George Martin was a wish list, you know, aim high and see what you get.

And he agreed to make the album. And it was like, it was like being with someone who was funny, intellectual, caring. He was like a cross between your father and a school teacher. He knew so much about music and how to create it and we just felt as though we were in safe hands. So yes, he did some beautiful arrangements but he was also one of the few people that if he told Ultravox to do something or not do something, we listened. Right. Right. That's right.

I think I was part of this, so we are the world documentary is the fact that Quincy Jones was the ideal guy to produce that because every musician respected him and would listen to him no matter how big the ego. That's absolutely true. You know when you're in the presence of a master and you behave yourself.

Do what you're told. That's why I'm on my best behavior right now, Mitch. I'm in the middle. Two more questions here. I'm loving this from Avery. Okay. Big fan of the brilliant album from Ultravox and I was wondering if it was always meant to be a one-off reunion recording-wise and are there any unreleased tracks from those sessions lying around? Ultravox had been apart for over 25 years. We split up just after Live Aid in 86 or 87, something like that.

All did separate things. And then 12, 13 years ago, we were all approached by a promoter saying if you ever think of doing anything again, you know, it's coming up for the big anniversary of something, the AVN album or something. And said, you know, and weirdly we all kind of said, yeah I'm kind of interested, what do the others think, you know. And we went out to play those tunes one more time live and just enjoy it. And of course, like all musicians were quite simple characters, you enjoy it and then you want more. So we ended up

writing together and we'd recorded in Canada. We recorded My House up in the Laurentians. So we took the band out there and created the entire album in a log cabin. So it's got very, very much a Canadian connection, just down the road from where Rush used to record. Wow. So in Moren Heights. Wow. I love these connections. Okay, last question here. I really enjoy the orchestrated album. How did you decide on both the songs adapted for

that project as well as the musicians chosen to participate in its recordings? Beautiful piece of work. Thank you. I'd like to take credit for it all but I certainly can't. There was a proper musician involved in that album. I needed someone, I wanted to do this orchestrated thing, to take these classic tunes that I just have this sense of melody, it's a Scottish thing I think, and I wanted to take these tunes and see what an orchestra could do with them, you know, expand them, make them haunting, make them big, make them bold, you know, and I needed the right guy to do it with. And I happened to bump into a guy called Ty Unwin, who writes film music.

And he was a massive fan. He knew more about me than I did, which is a bit creepy. And he's the one who suggested, he made a huge list of songs that he thought that either myself solo or ultra-vox or even visage possibly would make the translation to an orchestrated version easily. And he, we finally between us, the two of us picked the songs that we thought were best to try. And I was blown away by

the results. I mean, it was a, it was a passion project, but I'm glad you enjoyed it. I will see you Midge, August 16th at the Elma Combo. You're with Chalk Circle's Chris Tate and 416. That's Suza Palooza. Get your tickets now. Midge, this was an absolute pleasure. And I just want to say thank you so much for being so generous with your time.

Oh, well listen, it's been a joy. And thank you for having me on. And that brings us to the end of our 1514th show. Go to torontomic.com for all your Toronto Mic needs. I'm on Twitter, bluesky, I'm at torontomic. Much love to all who made this possible. That's Great Lakes Brewery, Palma Pasta, RecycleMyElectronics.ca, the Toronto Maple Leafs baseball team, and Ridley Funeral Home.

See you all tomorrow when Ron James drops by for another fun chat and maybe a little music too. See you then. It's my UI check, ask, just come in, I'll wear you bin Because everything is coming up rosy and gray Yeah, the wind is cold but the snow's warm, it's me today And your smile is fine and it's just like mine and it won't go away Cause everything is rosy and green